A school should be, among other things, a safe haven for children during the hours they are there. Sadly these days that is not always the case, as stories involving wounded or even dead students seem to be perpetually in the news. Most recently, word broke of a school where three students were injured when one discharged a rifle a police officer had left affixed to his motorcycle on school grounds.

While all three of the children injured in the accident which took place in Southern California survived their injuries, the details of what transpired are deeply unsettling all the same. The fact that a gun was left unattended at a school is just shocking. The fact that the gun in question was being treated in so cavalier a fashion by a police officer kicks the story into the category of outrageous.

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Reports indicate that there were countless safety measures taken to make the weapon safe. It was one of these measures that destroyed the bullet as it left the rifle. This is perhaps the only thing that saved the children from being shot rather than injured by shrapnel. There is one major safety measure the cop didn't take. This measure seems like the most obvious one of all. That would be not leaving a rifle of any kind unattended around elementary school aged children.

That, to me, seems like a no-brainer. There is no word of where the cop was when the gun was discharged. One of the children injured was sent home with his parents, the other two were sent to the hospital with minor injuries. The saddest part of this story is that the cop was there to draw attention to the Red Ribbon campaign to promote awareness about drug and alcohol abuse. This is probably not the sort of attention he wanted to bring to the program.